- Android backups currently support saving app data, but without per-app options.
- Google now appears to be working on individual toggles, letting you back up or exclude specific apps.
- The list sorts apps by data size, letting you prioritize your attention on the biggest data users.
By now, everyone using a smartphone should probably know that if they care at all about their personal data, they need to be backing it up somewhere off-device. Google already offers plenty of Android backup options, and we’ve recently been seeing those tools get even better, like with a smarter approach to backing up RAW photos. That trend continues today, as we uncover evidence for new, more granular controls for app backups.
When you back up your Android phone with Google, that includes data like your contacts, device settings, call and text history, and app data. But the problem is that not all that data is going to be equally useful, and some of it can take up a whole lot more space than other data. And if you’re approaching the storage ceiling of your Google One plan, that’s no good at all.